


the black parts of ourselves

by burningtoashes



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Implied Past Axel/Roxas, Post-Kingdom Hearts II, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:22:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3657045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burningtoashes/pseuds/burningtoashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lea dreams of him. It’s a wavering, breakable image, details eroded by the time that has passed without a reminder. What exact tilt of the head, what exact set of the mouth, what exact way would he pull his knee up to his chest when they sat in the castle, what exact expression he made as he fought like the Keyblade was just slightly too heavy for his thin arms.</p>
<p>When Ventus wakes up, the resemblance disappears. Lea tries to deal with his bitterness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the black parts of ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> One day I will write a real story. For now, deal with another annoyingly introspective word blob. Thanks :)

When they find Ventus, when Ventus is asleep, Lea can’t help the uncomfortable twisting feeling in his gut. The black space around his heart, the parts that sometimes whisper _Axel, Axel_ in painful reminders, have changed their bittersweet mantra to another name. He tries not to hear it. It still swims around tauntingly in his soul.

Standing beside Ventus, though, peering into his face as the eyes begin to flutter open, that’s when the illusion is shattered. The black parts of him shudder in agony, shiver and sweat from their fever-pitch grief. He’s not _him_ at all. His eyes-

Blue eyes alight on his face, and there’s a dawning moment of realization, a burst of surprise, but still a wide, wide smile, bright like midmorning sun, that hits him like a claw to the heart. Ventus looks at him, looks at him and cries, “Lea!”

He tries not to let his hands clench into fists. Instead he looks at Sora, rolls his eyes and says, “See, some people can remember what my name actually is.”

\---

Lea doesn’t know where to look for him anymore.

It’s Sora still, sometimes, when he hesitates by a sea salt ice cream stand or takes a moment to watch the sun set. Lea tricks himself into believing he can see a phantom image for a split second. He wills it into existence through sheer force of want, the slouched shoulders, the neutral line of a mouth, the quietly vicious blue eyes, always looking somewhere fall away. No matter how hard he focuses though, it’s gone in the span of a blink. Those shadows twisting like blood through his veins keen.

He’s gotten better at keeping the pain off his face- it makes Riku stare guiltily at his ridiculously large shoes for whatever irrational reason. Lea doesn’t like making him feel bad for doing the right thing.

But now, occasionally, it’s Ventus. Only when he’s still and quiet, asleep, because the resemblance shatters once he’s in motion, Keyblade positioned oddly in a backhand, his feet jumping around to get psyched. His eyes-

Ventus, after waking up, sticks to his side like glue. Lea appreciates it because Ventus is a rare connection to his past, to his Somebody, a shred of identity to hold on to. The pieces of _Axel_ ache. He’s gotten good at ignoring this. A constant pain is the same as no pain at all, eventually. He does ask though. Lea’d have thought that, after years of being linked, he’d feel a kinship with Sora. Everyone feels a kinship with Sora.

“He reminds me of,” Ventus starts, then stops. “Well, not exactly a person. But he reminds me of pain, I guess. Just a body of raw pain. Does that make any sense?”

He can’t find him anywhere.

\---

In his darker moments, the selfish, black parts of him, the parts that still call themselves _Axel_ , wish that Ventus had been the one to get lost between hearts. The body could have been _his_. Ventus got his turn already.

Then Lea feels guilty and ignores the black tendrils of despair by throwing himself into training for a while. He comes back more bruised than usual.

\---

It was only a matter of time before Ventus asked. Sora still cannot get Lea’s name right, no matter how many times he is patiently corrected. Riku slips occasionally too, but he’s generally better about it. Appreciate the small things.

“Why do they call you Axel, Lea?” Ventus asks. Lea pretends that he wasn’t hoping for some kind of recognition in his tone.

“They knew me as Axel before they knew me as Lea.”

“Why were you going by Axel?” Ventus follows up immediately, because he has no sense for noticing when people don’t want to talk about something. He’s much more like Sora than…he’s very much like Sora. “I mean, not that it doesn’t sound cool.”

“Well, I…Axel wasn’t really me,” Lea says hesitantly. He doesn’t really know how to explain it. “I’m still Axel, sort of. But he’s not Lea…He’s just a part of me. If that makes sense.”

Ventus nods like he understands. Maybe he does.

\---

Radiant Garden is hopelessly boring. They’ve been stuck here for far too long, waiting for Merlin and Yen Sid and Mickey and Riku to work out some way to get back and forth from the Realm of Darkness with Aqua safely. It’s better than they’re being careful, of course, but it doesn’t stop Lea from going stir crazy. He tries to help with the reconstruction sometimes. It’s his home too, technically. But he gets the feeling that none of the others trust him very much. Probably better that he stays out of the way.

Ventus joins him sometimes. He seems content to walk in silence when Lea wants to, except he swings his arms dramatically and is often humming something under his breath. Once, it sounds vaguely like one of the songs that Demyx used to play. He wonders if Demyx got his Somebody back. He wonders if any of them didn't. Ventus changes his tune and Lea tries not to think anymore.

Another walk, Lea stops by the sea salt ice cream stand, just to look at it. Ventus pulls himself up short and follows his gaze. “You going to get one? You have that Winner stick don’t you? You could get one for free.”

“It’s not my stick,” Lea says. Ventus raises his eyebrows at him curiously.

“Okay. Want to just go pay for one then?”

Lea scowls. He clenches his hands in the folds of his coat. He shouldn’t ask this question, because he knows that, either way, it’s just going to tear apart the shreds of _Axel_ and set them screaming. He can’t help his morbid curiosity. “Do you want one?”

“Me? I guess if you’re getting one,” says Ventus. “I’m not a huge fan of the salty-sweet thing, but sure.”

The black parts boil and burn. Lea keeps his jaw clamped shut and continues walking.

\---

If at all possible, Lea tries to shut himself away before the sun starts going down. If it’s not, he at least tries to face away from the west. If he can’t, he at least tries to stay away from Sora.

“I’m an old man, okay?” he says unconvincingly when Ventus teases him about his sleeping habits. “Not all of us got the luxury of a twelve year cat nap where we apparently didn’t age at all.”

“It is weird that I didn’t age, isn’t it? Not that I’m complaining.”

\---

Lea dreams of him. It’s a wavering, breakable image, details eroded by the time that has passed without a reminder. What exact tilt of the head, what exact set of the mouth, what exact way would he pull his knee up to his chest when they sat in the castle, what exact expression he made as he fought like the Keyblade was just slightly too heavy for his thin arms. Those black tendrils of _Axel_ seethe and weep and wrap themselves around Lea’s throat until it’s near impossible to breathe.

“Lea, wake up.”

Lea ( _Axel_ ) thinks that he should have tried harder. He should have held on a little tighter. He shouldn’t have hid behind the excuse of _no heart, no heart_ , he should have fought for something. Even if it all turned out the same.

“Hey, Lea!”

_Axel_ dreams of _him_. There’s no next life to meet him in, not really, no matter what they promised to each other. _Axel_ is guilty, he’s guilty, because he was too stupid to know he had a friend until it was too late. He’d give up his Somebody in an instant if it meant that _Roxas_ just got the chance-

“Lea!”

He wakes up to Ventus searching worriedly in his expression. He’s back to Lea again; _Axel_ subsides into the corners where he belongs. He tries to smile. “Sorry, bad dream.”

“Who’s Roxas?”

Lea freezes. He sits up. Ventus is furrowing his eyebrows like he’s trying to figure out a very complex puzzle. “What?”

“You were calling out for Roxas. Who’s that?”

It’s really hilarious, Ventus of all people asking him this question, so Lea can’t help but burst out laughing, even if it makes Ventus’s face crinkle even further into concern. The laughs rip up his throat in their harshness, makes the back of his tongue taste like blood. He answers honestly: “He’s nobody.”

\---

Ventus reminds him of blue skies and constant spring. The city was a playground where fighting was merely exercise and the only running he did was from angry old crones when he and Isa would cover their houses in artfully arranged toilet paper. Ventus reminds him of fearlessness, bright mismatching colors and quick earnest grins, of being perpetually on the verge of laughter.

Roxas, meanwhile, Roxas is sunset endings and salty-sweet stickiness that drips on your fingers, Roxas is dangling feet off the edge of eternity. He learned slowly how to smile again but he also remembered how to scream and how to cry and how it feels when all the breath rushes out of you without your consent. Roxas is a reminder of something, someone forgotten, flickering on his other side without taking form, taking shape. Roxas is uncertainty and emptiness and sacrifice. Roxas…

Lea doesn’t know where to find him.

\---

Ventus doesn’t let him get away with his answer. If there’s one way that he’s like Roxas, it’s in his stubbornness.  

Lea kind of figured that he’d ask the others. He’d just kind of hoped he wouldn’t. Sora unfortunately confirms it when he approaches him awkwardly one morning while Lea is choking down some cereal. “So, you told Ventus about Roxas.”

“Not on purpose,” Lea says, not really knowing why he feels the need to defend himself.

“Well, yeah, you wouldn’t bring him up on purpose,” Sora says. Or really he almost _grumbles_ which is not a verb Lea would normally associate with Sora. He seems a little surprised himself for a second. “That is, I told him the technical stuff. But I didn’t…I mentioned that you two were in the Organization together, but I didn’t say anything else. I figured that was yours to share.”

“It’s yours too,” Lea says as evenly as he can manage. “Well, sort of.”

Sora takes a seat across from him and steals his cereal without even a thought. Lea hadn’t been hungry anyway. There’s a moment of Lea waiting and Sora chewing.

“I can remember some of Roxas if I really focus on it,” Sora starts once he swallows his mouthful of bland grains. “Flashes of you and someone else that I can’t place really. Some other members of the Organization too. Demyx playing some sad song. Luxord shuffling his cards. Larxene glaring. But if I try too hard to call the pictures into focus, I get really woozy. The one time I kept trying anyway, I ended up fainting.”

Sora takes another bite of cereal. Lea waits, because he gets the sense that the kid isn’t done talking yet.

“Roxas really wasn’t much like me. I think he was stronger. Braver. He’s my backbone,” Sora says. He taps his spoon rhythmically on the side of the bowl. “I just wanted you to know that he really cared about you a lot, Axel.”

The black parts of him are silent for once. Lea ( _Axel_ ) smiles. “I know.”

\---

Ventus enters his room hesitantly that evening while Lea’s reading. Riku came back earlier with news that he and the magicians were as confident as they were going to get that their trip to the Realm of Darkness would include a return ticket. They’d be leaving to go get Aqua first thing in the morning.

Ventus settles himself cross-legged on the foot of Lea’s bed and says simply, “Vanitas.”

Lea looks up from his book curiously. Ventus meets his gaze head on, unwavering, confident. He continues, “Sora reminds me of Vanitas.”

“Thought you said it wasn’t a person.”

“He wasn’t. Just part of a person. Part of me,” Ventus says. He waves his hands around in the air like he’s grasping words from it. “He’s the black parts of myself.”

Lea is silent. Ventus scoots forward, leans in on his elbows.

“You said when we met that you wanted to live forever in people’s memories, right? Well, that’s how it works for everyone,” Ventus says earnestly. He’s really nothing like Roxas. The thought doesn’t hurt quite as much as it used to. “Roxas, wherever else he may be, is alive in your memories. In Sora and Riku’s too. And now, even in mine. He’s not nobody. Not to us.”

Lea laughs, but it doesn’t tear and rip through his throat this time. It just flows out naturally, normally. He rubs his eyes. “I was wrong, you do have something in common.”

“Huh?”

He looks at Ventus seriously. “You’re both idiots.”

Ventus smiles wide and bright like the midmorning sun, and, somewhere within the world of his memories, Lea can feel Roxas smiling slightly too.


End file.
